In my last post, I explored the reasons why I think it’s natural and healthy to have some fear of sex.

But I also know that the overwhelming fear that I experienced before marriage was unwarranted and unhelpful. The well-intentioned women who scared me witless at their marriage-preparation camp forgot to balance their warnings with encouragement and light-heartedness. I don’t want to make that same mistake.

Because with the right person, and in the right context (namely, a vibrant, thriving marriage), sex can be a ton of fun and filled with beauty. It can be goofy, silly, adventurous, exciting, and sublimely romantic. I would know.

If you’re planning to have sex someday, and have some healthy apprehension, here are just a few guidelines to make sure sex never has to be overly-scary:

1. Be sure to only make love to a man or woman whom you know would make a responsible, caring, self-sacrificing parent. Even if you don’t ever plan to have kids, or if you believe you are physically unable to bear children, this is still important since God and life have ways of ruining your plans and dashing your expectations. As I pointed out in my last post, there’s always a risk of pregnancy when you have sex.

2. Marry him first. I can’t stress this enough. And of course, only marry someone who is absolutely, without a doubt, committed for life. Again, if a pregnancy happens (unexpectedly or not), if you already have a committed spouse, becoming a parent isn’t nearly as scary a prospect, no matter the circumstances.

3. Talk about sex with your partner before getting married. Not obsessively, but enough that you both have some shared expectations. You’ll feel better if you know what your partner is thinking.

4. Remember that God invented sex. And everything that God dreams up is way more spectacular – though usually more complicated – than you could ever imagine. Also, He designed it to create babies, so you can bet that there will be blessings hidden in the experience, even if it happens by accident on your part.

What else? Do you have anything to add?

Image courtesy of Late Night Movie.

The other day, a young acquaintance of mine sent me a message on Facebook asking if we could get a coffee some time and talk about Fertility Awareness Method (FAM). She got engaged recently, and has been discussing various birth control options with her fiancé, and wanted to explore FAM a little deeper. “I’m kind of scared, though,” she confided.

Her feelings, of course, are sooooo natural. I can sympathize completely. What a ton of faith to put in your own discernment skills! How can you be sure you’re doing it right? How can you be certain you know when you’re fertile and when you’re not? What if you mess it up, and have a baby in the first nine months of marriage? What will everyone think of your choice to go with FAM then?? What if you’re totally not ready to have kids and have years of school ahead of you (as I did), and a baby would destroy all the plans you’ve worked  so hard for?

This is daunting stuff to deal with. In a way, I can’t even sympathize fully because I’ve never used FAM to try to delay pregnancy – I only found out about it after I wanted to get pregnant. But I can just imagine being in that situation five years ago when I got married. I would probably be paralyzed with fear. (Oh wait: I was).

I wrote her back, saying I’d love to talk about FAM, and that I agreed that FAM was kind of scary. But then I realized something.

The Pill is kind of scary, too. For starters, it too can fail in preventing pregnancy (As I’ve mentioned like 18 times already, I have three friends who all got pregnant on the Pill).

Second, the Pill carries all kinds of frightening possible side effects like blood clots and depression. Furthermore, it can destroy your sex drive and can really mess up your fertility for the future when you actually want to have kids. (I know about both of these side-effects firsthand).

But condoms are scary, too: they fail more often than both FAM or the Pill.

In short, sex is just kind of a scary thing to get into. There is always the chance of pregnancy, no matter what precautions you take. Because – DUH – that’s what sex is designed for. That’s its purpose.

And pregnancy is scary. For heaven’s sake, it can kill. Thank God, we’ve learned to make it a very rare cause of death in the last few decades, but in the nineteenth century death during pregnancy, labor, or post-partem was actually the main cause of death among women.* Holy crap.

What’s more, pregnancy brings new people into existence. That’s staggering when you think about it. It turns your life on its head, making you responsible for another human’s well-being like never before.

Every time you have sex, you engage with these realities.

But you don’t hear about the scary side of sex too often, do you? Who’s afraid of sex? We’re supposed to love it, strive for it, boast about it. We’re told that sex is glorious, wonderful, fun. We have a general sense that sex is the highest achievement in life, the ultimate form of recreation.

In TV shows and movies, pregnancy is so separated from sex – it’s nothing more than an occasional, unexpected byproduct – that we often feel like the two aren’t really related.

I don’t think we have enough reverence for sex. And I’m not even talking about sex being holy and sacred, which I also happen to believe. I’m just talking about the sheer, overwhelming power sex has to completely change your life, for better or for worse. We need to respect that power.

If you find sex altogether a little frightening, I think that’s a good sign: you understand the magnitude of what you’re getting yourself into. It’s healthy and natural.

On the other hand, if you’re not at all scared, you probably don’t fully understand, and frankly, I don’t think you should be doing it until you get a better grip on reality. (I’m not talking about couples who are already happily married and desiring to have children, of course).

At the same time, though, sex is not all danger and peril. God knows (and most of you probably know by now) that I was scared witless of sex before I got married, and that was unnecessary and totally unhealthy. Sex is also glorious, wonderful and fun. And I want to explore that further in my next post.

What are your thoughts? Do you think I’m putting too much emphasis on the frightening side of sex?

Are there other reasons that young people might be afraid of sex which I haven’t addressed?

Did/do you struggle with fear? Also, do you think this is only a women’s issue?

*data source: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/femhist/medicine.shtml

Image courtesy of Fred Boudaine.

Once gain, I’ve come across a book that I think every woman could benefit from reading.

At first glance, for a variety of reasons, you may not think this book is relevant to you. Maybe you’ve never really thought about your fertility. But if you’ve got ovaries and a uterus, fertility is a part of your life in one way or another, and I think it’s incredibly empowering to understand how it all works.

If you’re married, you’re having sex; and if you’re having sex, you’re probably either trying to get pregnant or trying to avoid getting pregnant. In either case, this book is relevant to you. Also, even if you’re single and currently unconcerned about fertility, but if you suffer from any cycle-related problems like menstrual cramps or PMS, you might find some useful information in this book.

Of course, most Western women today use the Pill to prevent pregnancy, and know about about other medications and procedures to help them achieve pregnancy when they’re ready, and consequently feel little concern for their fertility. But recently I’m finding that many women are looking for a different way to manage their fertility. They’re looking for something healthier, greener, and more natural. And that’s why a lot of women (along with their partners) are turning to Fertility Awareness or Natural Family Planning.

The Trouble with Fertility Awareness

As most of you know, I’ve become a huge advocate for Fertility Awareness in recent months, which I first pursued as a way to help achieve pregnancy. When I started to write and talk about it, a few of my friends got into fertility awareness, too. They bought or borrowed Taking Charge of Your Fertility and quit the Pill and started to practice what they had learned.

But, like me, many of my friends experienced frustration with fertility awareness, especially in the first few months.

“My cycles aren’t anything like the book describes,” one friend confided. “I’m charting every day, but I’m still not sure what’s going on in my body. It still doesn’t look like I’ve ovulated this month and I’m already on day 21!”

“My fluid patterns don’t seem to match up with my temperature patterns,” another friend complained. “I’m not sure what’s going on.”

The trouble is, paying attention to your fluids and charting your temperatures are only helpful if you can make sense of what you’re seeing. And I noticed that both my friends and I were often finding our patterns abnormal, unpredictable, and confusing.

How are you supposed to feel confident that FAM will help you achieve or avoid pregnancy when your cycles are so irregular? This didn’t feel nearly as liberating as we thought it should feel.

Some Help

That’s where Fertility, Cycles and Nutrition comes in. This book is all about using nutrition, in the form of food and supplements, to help regulate your cycles so that they are normal and predictable — more like the ones described in the books.

With more regular cycles, you can more confidently use FAM to either avoid or achieve pregnancy. What’s more, a healthy, regular cycle is connected to less painful periods and lessened PMS symptoms. High fives all around! What woman isn’t looking for these things?

What Sold Me

I started to see how this book can be helpful for everyone when Shannon pointed out that if you have, for example, short luteal phases (which I do), it sucks whether you’re trying to have a baby or you’re trying not to have a baby.

See, if you’re trying to get pregnant, a short luteal phase makes it impossible for a fertilized egg to ever implant in your uterine lining, which is necessary for it to develop into any embryo. So that sucks. And if you’re trying to avoid getting pregnant, a short luteal phase sucks because it means fewer nights of worry-free (i.e non-fertile) sex. Booo! Thumbs down! Who wants to abstain more than they have to, right?? So lengthening the luteal phase is desirable for every woman, regardless of what she wants.

So, after explaining how estrogen and progesterone and all that work, Shannon suggests a number of supplements and nutritional choices to help lengthen that phase of the cycle. She backs it all up by citing numerous reliable, scientific studies.

Of course, short luteal phases aren’t the only thing the author offers help with. She offers suggestions for other infertility problems, such as polycystic ovary syndrome, repeat miscarriages, or thyroid malfunctions. She also has chapters on how to have lighter, shorter, pain-free periods, and alleviate PMS symptoms. She has a chapter on nutrition during and after pregnancy, too, and even a section on male infertility. The list goes on.

I just finished this book this week, and haven’t managed to get my hands on the vitamin supplement that she recommends for women like me, so I can’t say yet whether her advice will work for me. But her references to multiple positive studies have given me new hope. The stats for women who achieved pregnancy using these supplements seem comparable to those who went on hormone therapy or underwent medical procedures, so I’m pretty pumped.

The Book in Summary

Fertility, Cycles and Nutrition starts off by giving an overview of what healthy eating looks like, which is great for the beginner interested in health and nutrition. She goes over healthy oils, vitamins and minerals, food substitutions, and how sugar affects hormones and fertility. Then she goes into specific problems and how to deal with them.

I highly recommend this book for all women seeking a healthier approach to fertility, pregnancy, and pregnancy-prevention. It’s easy to read, chock-full of useful information, and incredibly empowering.

And if you buy it through my links, I’ll make about 32 cents. But feel free to borrow it from a friend or the library. I’m all about saving money. (If you’re in Canada, you might prefer this link).

More on Fertility Awareness:

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Natural Family Planning

Attention, All Women Everywhere

Why I Have Become Anti-Pill (And Pro-FAM)

Remember the other day when I said I would further explore why sex is such a big deal to Christians, and why we think it’s so important to reserve sex for marriage? Well, here you go!

Everybody knows that my favourite author in the whole wide world is C. S. Lewis. If you didn’t know that, evidently you have never had a conversation with me.

If you’re not familiar with C. S. Lewis, at the very least you probably know that he wrote the Narnia Chronicles, as well as a number of very popular theological books. But my very favourite of Lewis’s writings is a series that not many people know about. It’s a trilogy of adult science fiction novels, often called the Cosmic Trilogy, which were written in the 1940’s – a good decade before he wrote his famous children’s stories.

I want to draw your attention to one of my favourite scenes in the second of the space stories, entitled Perelandra, in order to illustrate some of my thoughts on the sanctity of sex.

In the novel, the hero, Ransom, has been summoned and transported to Venus (or Perelandra, as it is called by its inhabitants) by the planet’s guiding spirit to help save it from following Earth into the grip of Evil.  Lewis reimagines Perelandra as a richly inhabited paradise with floating organic islands and an opaque golden sky. For the first little while, Ransom doesn’t exactly understand what his role is supposed to be in all of it, so he spends his first few days exploring the luxuriant planet with its tropical golden seas and trees that produce giant glittering bubbles. Finding himself hungry one morning, he comes across a gourd which is filled with a liquid and he hesitantly decides to taste it. His experience is so unexpected and intense that it transforms the way he understands pleasure: “It was so different from every other taste [he’d ever experienced] that it seemed mere pedantry to call it a taste at all. It was like the discovery of a totally new genus of pleasures, something unheard of among men, out of all reckoning, beyond all covenant” (p. 46).

The story continues:

“As he let the empty gourd fall from his hand and was about to pluck a second one, it came into his head that he was now neither hungry nor thirsty. And yet to repeat a pleasure so intense and almost so spiritual seemed an obvious thing to do. His reason . . . was all in favour of tasting this miracle again. . . . Yet something seemed opposed to this ‘reason.’” (p. 46)

This is where it gets interesting for me:

“It is difficult to suppose that this opposition came from desire, for what desire would turn from so much deliciousness? But for whatever cause, it appeared to him better not to taste again. Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity – like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day” (p. 46).

Ransom experiences this same feeling a number of times on Perelandra: the marvels and pleasures of the planet are so perfect and complete that he dares not repeat them beyond necessity. To grasp for more would cheapen the exquisiteness of the experience. Ransom later wonders whether the root of all evil stems from the natural urge to repeat pleasures beyond their natural duration.

I think that this scene relates to all areas and pleasures of life. But I think it is particularly illustrative of the Christian understanding of sex.

We believe that there should be a restraint on sexual experience not because it is bad, ugly, or dirty, but because it is so utterly exquisite and profound that to pursue it unrestrainedly would be an insult to its beauty.

As I explained in my last post, sex is a union so powerful that it is intended to take place only within the context of a whole-life union. It is meant to be shared between two people only when they are willing to share everything else simultaneously: all material wealth, all troubles and joys, all dreams and days and nights and struggles. To demand or pursue sex outside of this whole-life union is an affront to its immeasurable worth.

And so that’s why sex is such a big deal to Christians, and to me.

What do you think? Does this illustration work? Do you agree with what Lewis is getting at here? Don’t you totally want to buy the book now? You can! (affiliate link)

Text and cover image from Perelandra by C. S. Lewis. 1943. Harper Collins, 2005.

If you’re not a Christian, you might be wondering why we make such a fuss over the issue. Why save it for marriage? What’s so bad about sex outside of marriage? We live in the 21^st century, for goodness sakes! Those ideas are so Dark Ages.

But if you know me at all you know sex is a big deal to me. So, to answer these questions, I’m going to draw from a couple of really smart thinkers who have said it better than I could ever say it.

The One-Flesh Reality

Sex is such a big deal, in part, because of the way it unites two people. We believe that this unity should only occur within marriage. Let me explain.

C. S. Lewis (my favourite writer of all time) lays down the foundation of marriage in Mere Christianity:

The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism. . . . And Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact – just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument. The inventor of the human machine was telling us that its two halves, the male and the female, were made to be combined in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined.

The text that Lewis is referring to is Matthew 19:5-6: Jesus says, “They are no longer two, but one . . . what God has joined together, no one should separate.” This is fundamental to the Christian understanding of sex: when two people have intercourse, they become one flesh. This is a profound kind of unity that takes place on multiple levels. As Greg Boyd (my favourite living Christian thinker) points out, God himself is involved in creating the one-flesh reality.

Then Lewis adds this:

The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside of marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union.

Sex creates a physical, spiritual and emotional unity that was not meant to occur outside the whole-life union.

It’s important to note here that even if they’re not married, when two people have sex, Christians believe that they become united in the one-flesh reality. This is evident from Paul’s words, “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh’” (1Cor. 6:16). So sex involves a profound spiritual union, which, when separated from the total union of marriage, creates an enormous, catastrophic mess.

Greg Boyd, in one his essays, also explains that “Unlike other sorts of sin, sexual sin involves violating the most sacred and foundational covenant God gave for humans to enter into with one another.” He adds  that the new oneness which is created in the sexual act “reflects the love and ecstasy of the Trinity and is the foundational covenant between humans in the Bible,” and when we casually tear apart what God joins together, “it has negative effects on us and on others that we can hardly begin to calculate.”

Drawing from America as an example, Boyd briefly discusses a couple of the most obvious consequences that this kind of “tearing” has: astronomical incidence of STI’s; huge numbers of children being born out of wedlock, which contributes to poverty, crime and violence; high levels of sexual dysfunction; and a tragically high demand for abortions.

Now, I want to be clear about one thing: Christianity is not against sex or even sexual pleasure. Far from it. In fact, Christianity has a very high regard and profound respect for sex. It is sacred and beautiful, and deserves only the utmost respect.

OK, so some Christians are against sex and sexual pleasure. But God is not. He invented them and he loves them. When folks treat sex like it’s a dirty and shameful thing, they dishonor God. Sex ought to be celebrated.

I don’t want this post to go on too long, so I’ll follow up tomorrow with some further thoughts on how and why Christians treat sex the way they do.

Then I want to expand on why sex is a big deal to me, even if it weren’t for my belief in God and respect for the Bible.

In the meantime: What are your own thoughts on the subject? Do you think I, or other religious folks, take sex too seriously? Or do I not take it seriously enough? What do you think about Lewis’ and Boyd’s thoughts on the subject? Do you agree that sex is a union that should only take place within the context of total life union?

Further Reading: Greg Boyd, “Why is the Bible so strict on prohibiting pre-marital sex?”

Photo courtesy of RedMorris.

Guys and gals, I consider myself a feminist. I declare this with a bit of reluctance, because I have read so many grouchy, man-hating feminists; but I cannot deny it.

I believe in equality of the sexes. I believe that women can (and should) be teachers, prophets, scholars, preachers, engineers, police officers, doctors, CEO’s, and everything else that men can be, although I submit that men probably make better firefighters and bodybuilders on account of their superior muscle mass.* I think there are major problems with the way the church has traditionally understand man’s “headship” over woman in marriage, and I think it’s about time women had more influence in the church.

I just thought I’d clear that up after my recent posts about why I’m anti-Pill. I worry sometimes that readers will think that I am anti-feminist for having such “conservative” ideas about birth control. The Pill is generally seen as having been integral to the feminist movement and the key to sexual equality. Anyone opposed to birth control is opposed to equality, some folks assume. You can’t be pro-woman and anti-Pill. But I don’t think that’s true at all.

The thing is, I think the Pill works against women’s freedom and equality in a lot of ways.

Here are some reasons why:

1) Like I’ve discussed before, I think the Pill takes away a woman’s reproductive freedom by making her dependent on (usually male) doctors.

The medical community seems to assume that women are generally too stupid/ lazy/wimpy to keep track of their own cycles and control their own fertility, and that’s why they have to prescribe the Pill. Since women are too incompetent to take care of it themselves, they need experts to prescribe them easy-to-swallow drugs, so that they don’t have to think about their cycles at all.

The contraceptive mindset devalues education about our own bodies. It encourages us to put everything into our doctors’ hands. It encourages the “Listen to Doctor, Doctor knows best” approach to health. Knowledge about our cycles becomes irrelevant in the contraceptive climate, because Doctor can take care of everything for us. It encourages ignorance, which I think is dangerous.

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: we don’t need doctors to control our fertility for us. It’s not beyond our capacity. For the most part, we can take care of it ourselves. We are competent and brave, and our bodies (for the most part) are perfectly healthy without hormonal contraceptives, and we should not fear our fertility. We should feel free to embrace our cycles and understand our bodies.

2) The Pill encourages the idea that a woman’s fertile body is dangerous and needs to be subdued.

With the Pill, the woman has to have her body unnaturally altered to prevent pregnancy while the man’s body can keep doing what it was built to do. As a consequence, she has to deal with the side effects of the Pill (like decreased libido and all kinds of health risks) while he gets off scott-free. His fertility is just fine the way it is.

My question is, why doesn’t the man have to take a drug to make him temporarily impotent until he’s ready to be a father? Why aren’t doctors working hard to develop a drug like that? After all, as Toni Weschler points out in Taking Charge of Your Fertility,** a woman is only fertile a couple days every month, and she only has a few hundred eggs in her body from the start, which eventually run out. Men, on the other hand, have millions of sperm in their bodies at any given moment, which are continuously being replaced, and men can continue to father children until death. Plus, men already tend to have a higher sex drive than most women, and could probably stand to have some decrease in libido. Shouldn’t men be held responsible for reining in their quadrillions of aggressive sperm, instead of women having to protect their few precious eggs from unwanted fertilization?

If you ask me, the current situation is unfair and goes against everything that feminists stand for. Why is my fertility considered a threat whereas a man’s is not? Why must my fertility be restrained while his is encouraged?

3. The Pill saddles women with the full responsibility of birth control.

When the Pill is used for birth control, the woman has to do everything: she pays for the drug and makes all the doctor’s appointments. She makes sure she fills her prescriptions on time. And then, if she gets pregnant, she gets the blame – it’s her fault for not taking the Pill correctly.

Toni Weschler says is best:

While the Pill was originally designed to sexually emancipate women, what also transpired was burdening the woman with the sole responsibility of birth control.

Unlike most other methods, FAM [by contrast] affords men the opportunity to lovingly and actively share in the responsibility of contraception (pp 16-17).

With FAM, yes, the woman has to keep track of her cervical fluids and whatnot, but the man takes equal responsibility in abstaining during fertile periods. It is a decision that the couple must continually make together. He becomes actively involved in the family-planning process.

This sounds to me like a much fairer arrangement.

So it is as a feminist that I reject the Pill — not as an opponent.

What are your thoughts? Does the Pill emancipate women or does it burden them — or both?

*I must clarify: I do believe that there are inherent differences between the sexes, meaning each gender has its particular strengths and weaknesses.  But gender is another topic for another blog post.
** Yup, that’s an affiliate link. Meaning I get about 53 cents if you buy the book from the link.

Photo courtesy of blmurch.

So, I’ve written a couple of posts on the Pill and why I’m no longer a fan. On a more recent post, Diana (though being generally pro-Pill) had this to say about Fertility Awareness Method (FAM), the alternative that I prefer:

I definitely would encourage monogamous, heterosexual couples to consider it for their family planning needs.

This elicited a couple of thoughts from me.

1) That’s a good point. You gotta be monogamous for FAM. It doesn’t work otherwise.

If you’re the kind of woman who engages in sex with multiple partners at a time, or who changes partners fairly frequently, FAM is obviously not a viable option. With FAM, there are certain times during your cycle that you abstain from sex or use barrier methods if you want to delay pregnancy. Other times, you enjoy sex completely unprotected because you know your body cannot get pregnant during those times. Part of the benefit of FAM is that you can have these deliciously unprotected hay-rolls with your partner without worrying about unplanned pregnancy.

This whole system only works if you’re with one man who is as committed to FAM as you are — a man who understands and is willing to abstain or use other barriers during fertile periods and all that. FAM is something you practice together and takes a lot of commitment.

This isn’t going to work if you frequently sleep with men whom you meet at bars and are just looking for a “good time.”  You should be using something else. In these circumstances, you should never have sex unprotected, because you’re probably not in the position to care for a child, and you might be at risk for getting an STD.

So yes, FAM is only worth considering if you’re in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship.

2) Um . . . committed, monogamous, heterosexual relationships are the only kind of sexual relationships I’m trying to encourage here at Project M.

This is a blog about marriage. I’m all about, “Hey, marriage is awesome, you should try it [and then stick with it for the rest of your life].” So in the context of Project M, the Pill/FAM discussion is always relevant. If my readers are not interested in these kinds of relationships, they won’t find much here because we already disagree about the fundamentals of sexual relationships.

The lifestyle that I have described above — engaging in casual, uncommitted sex with multiple partners — is not one that I endorse at all. I think it is unhealthy, dangerous, bad for society and bad for the soul. And it makes God weep.

So what am I trying to say, here, exactly?

1.  Diana’s right: I don’t think FAM is for everyone; but

2. I do think it’s worth considering if you’re married, and marriage is what I’m all about here.

None of this probably comes as a surprise to anyone, but sometimes I think it’s worth it to state the obvious, just to make sure we’re all on the same page.

Any additional thoughts? Is this post so obvious that it’s not even worth saying? Do you have any additional thoughts on birth control or monogamy?

Photo courtesy of Conor Keller.

As many of you know, I only became aware of Fertility Awareness (via Natural Family Planning) about four months ago. But within these last four months, everything I ever believed or felt about birth control has utterly changed.

I now feel passionate about spreading the word about Fertility Awareness. Most of it is related to my newfound frustration with the Pill. Here are some of the reasons I have become anti-Pill:

1. The Pill gives us a false sense of control.

I have participated in countless group conversations in my lifetime wherein we have discussed how many kids we want to have. These conversations are always based on the assumption that we have complete control over the matter.

I decided years ago, for example, that I wanted four kids, having the first one when I was 24, and then having the rest about two years apart after that so I would be finished by the time I was 30. It was a great plan, I thought.

I now know that planning is kind of ridiculous. I turn 25 in less than two months. I had to endure a teensy bit of heartbreak to learn that most of us in fact have very little control over such matters.

One of my close friends had a baby while on the Pill. I have had no baby, after almost a year off the Pill.  I often hear about women who damage their uteruses during childbirth or things like that and who can’t have any more babies, even though they wanted more. Turns out, fertility is not so easily manipulated.

Granted, taking the Pill gives us more control over our reproduction than we would have if we copulated willy-nilly without it, but it is still not fool-proof because our bodies are complex, living organisms which we will never fully understand.  I doubt that we will ever have complete control over our bodies. But we are fed the lie that we do if only we take a little Pill every day, and it can distort our ideas of how life works.

Fertility Awareness (or FAM), in contrast, takes a much healthier and more realistic approach to reproduction: it understands that fertility is something that happens to our bodies, independent of our will. In response, FAM teaches us to observe our bodies and act accordingly to maximize or minimize our chances of getting pregnant; but ultimately, our bodies are doing the real work.

(As a side note, though, using FAM to prevent pregnancy is about as effective as the Pill is, but it embraces the natural rhythms of our bodies rather than trying to change them).

2. Use of the Pill is based on the assumption that we ought to have absolute control over our fertility.

And I’m not so sure about that. A certain amount of control over reproduction is beneficial, no doubt – delaying pregnancy allowed me to finish my education while married, for example – but I find the idea troubling that we ought to be able to switch our fertility on and off like a light switch. It just ain’t natural, and I’m becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the notion.

3. The Pill makes us dependent on doctors rather than encouraging us to take active roles in our own reproductive lives.

When I got engaged, I was informed that I needed to set up a doctor’s appointment and to get a prescription for birth control because (of course) I didn’t want to get pregnant right away. So I did it. And for four years I went in regularly to get that prescription refilled. Then, four years later, I decided that I wanted to have a baby. I went in to see my doctor so that she could tell me what to do next. She told me to get some vaccinations and then wait to see what happened.

Six months later I had no freaking idea what was happening to my body. My cycles were crazy and unintelligible.  I was buying pregnancy test after pregnancy test, all inexplicably negative. Everyone urged me to see my doctor about getting tested and possibly treated.

If my doctor had diagnosed me with something, the next step would have been for her to prescribe me some different pills, or for a different doctor to perform some complicated medical procedure on my body to try to switch my fertility back on. I would continue to be a passive participant in the matter.

But since my doctor had been unhelpful in the past, I decided to do my own searching.

And I found out that I didn’t necessarily need my doctor after all. I discovered that I hadn’t needed her all those years to prescribe me pills: I could have delayed pregnancy on my own terms using FAM. I also learned that I was quite capable of identifying many fertility problems myself. Now I am learning to maximize my fertility using things like nutrition. If that doesn’t help I may eventually get help from some other healthcare providers, but this time as an informed, active participant rather than an ignorant dupe.

I have discovered that the mainstream approach to fertility leaves me a passive consumer whereas FAM has allowed me to take fertility into my own hands. And that just feels right.

4. It makes me crazy-angry to think that my sisters and I have been manipulated into thinking we need to buy a product (i.e. the Pill) when we don’t need to buy anything at all.

I believe that the medical community has manufactured a demand for something we don’t really need.

Pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money off of our ignorance. As long as we remain passive consumers, believing that the Pill is the only answer to our problems, unaware of natural birth control methods, the medical community profits. It’s in their best interests to keep us ignorant. And this makes me livid.

I do not want The Man to profit from my ignorance and sense of helplessness. I do not want to be dependent on their products. And I don’t want other women to feel that the Pill is their only option. For many women, it is not.

5. The Pill is unnatural, potentially hazardous to our bodies, bad for the environment, and bad for our bank accounts. (I know, I know: more research needs to be done on the middle two, but I am not very optimistic).

FAM, in contrast, is natural, healthy, safe, and free. Since I am pro- natural health, protecting the environment, and spending as little as possible, I am saying No to the Pill and Yes to FAM.*

*(OK, my husband and I have made these decisions together, but I have had the main voice in the matter)

How about you? Have you said no to the Pill? Why/why not? Do you have any doubts about the Pill? Or do you think it’s still a good thing, regardless?

Further reading:

Attention, All Women Everywhere! (Why You Need to Start Charting Your Cycles)

What’s in a Name? “Natural Family Planning” versus “Fertility Awareness Method”

The Contraceptive Mentality – That Married Couple

Ditching the Pill for Good – Macleans

Photo Courtesy of Code Poet.

For the last few weeks I have been defending early marriage. Part of my argument for why we ought to consider marrying younger had to do with saving sex for marriage: I believe that sex should stay within marriage, but that it’s unreasonable to expect people to wait until their late twenties — the age at which North Americans generally get hitched — to have sex. Thus, people should consider getting married younger.

The natural — and perfectly reasonable — objection that many readers have to this idea is that it will encourage young people to rush unprepared into marriage just so they can enjoy guilt-free sex.

Obviously, this is a legitimate concern. I absolutely agree that sex alone is a terrible reason to get married. I am certain that countless couples have found themselves in bad marriages just because they wanted sex and thought marriage was the only way to get it. So I don’t want anyone to think that marriage alone solves the sex problem, and I would never counsel a young couple to make their vows just so they can finally get into bed together.

Indeed, couples should never rush into marriage, for any reason. They should take very serious time to think about the decision to make life vows. They should be certain that they are ready to stake their lives on this relationship and that the other person is, too.

But I do have one thing to say:

Our sex drive does have some merit, and we should listen to what it has to say.

I believe that sex was all God’s idea and he just loves it. He thinks sex is the bomb. He loves seeing committed couples copulate (whew! — alliteration) and he gave us sex drives for a reason.

I think God invented the human sex drive in part to encourage us to get married.

Sex drive is powerful for a reason, I think. God wanted us to feel — in a very powerful way — the weighty significance of sexual relationships. He probably knew that we would need some nudging in the direction of marriage. We might be more reluctant to ever get hitched — to make that enormous, sacrificial commitment — without a little prodding from our eager nether-regions.

And our sex drives tell us something important: that we’re designed for sex and making babies! And we’re designed to do it when we’re young. When we’re healthy, virile, energetic and . . . elastic. Metaphorically and literally speaking.

I’m not saying that we can’t have babies when we’re older. Lots of fabulous families start (or keep growing) when the parents are in their thirties or even forties. But for the most part, it’s clear that our bodies were meant for early childbearing. There’s a reason that we’re most fertile (and interested in sex) in our early adulthood. That’s when we’re supposed to produce offspring!

God made our bodies this way. Or, if you don’t believe in God, you could say that Nature made us this way. Why should we fight it? Why should we wait until our late twenties to get married and our thirties to have children? (I have responded to some of the oft-cited reasons already)

Our society has all kinds of horrible ways of talking about our primordial interest in sex. They use words like “horny” and “randy.” They wrinkle their noses and ask questions like, “Should a couple really get married just to satisfy their randiness?” To me, this is an ugly way of asking, “Is our sex drive really a legitimate indicator that we ought to enter into a committed relationship?” And my answer to that question is “Yes! . . . At least, that’s part of it.”

Sex alone is not a good enough reason to get married. Of course. But a desire for sex with a particular person, when coupled with a desire for lifelong intimacy with that person, and a willingness to sacrifice everything to that person is a good reason to get married.

Of course, we have to be careful, when considering marriage, to be sure that our sex drive is not fooling us into thinking we are ready for the whole package deal when we’re not. Sex can play tricks on our minds if we’re not careful. Or it can blow past all logical thinking completely and get us to do all kinds of things we regret later if we don’t treat it with enormous caution. We have to be thoughtful and honest and make sure that sex is not the only — or even prime — motivator for getting married. And this is going to be extremely difficult to discern.

But desire for sex is not a completely meaningless component, either. I don’t think we should treat our sex drive as entirely irrelevant. It says something important, as long as we don’t allow it to drown out everything else in the mean time.

So if you’re dying to have sex with your beloved, and you truly feel that you could sacrifice everything for him or her, and that he or she would be willing to do the same for you; and if you think your partner would make a good parent and a good, lifelong friend to you . . . what’s stopping you? Why not consider marriage?

How do you feel about this? Do you think I esteem sex too highly? Do you think there are dangers to this way of thinking? Or is it important? What do you think?

Photo courtesy of Suzanne Clayton.

We’ve got a winner!

Thanks for everyone who submitted a comment and tweeted about the giveaway for A Private Affair. I got a lot of interesting feedback, and I appreciated everyone’s honesty and openness. To be honest, I didn’t expect that level of frankness from so many people! Thanks to everyone for making it an interesting conversation. If you haven’t read all the comments yet, you should.

I made a list of all the entries and then ran my numbers through random.org, and the winner of A Private Affair is Jamie. Congratulations! I have already emailed Jamie and hope to get that out to her as soon as possible.

Remember, if you’re still interested in the game, you can buy it on sale during the month of February.

As for my own misconceptions about sex, I can relate to almost everybody in some respects. Like many of you, I was surprised how un-unatural it was. I hadn’t realized it would take so much talking and compromise! I didn’t know it would take so long to get it right and figure everything out. No one ever discusses the details on TV! I thought it was just supposed to happen, but the truth is both partners have to be very open to talking about it. Especially if they want it to be good for both of them. And by that I mean if they want it to be good for the woman.

Many of you mention that you thought sex was going to be fun and satisfying, but found that it could be kind of a chore and very frustrating. In that respect I was quite opposite. My problem, like Anonymous, was that I was actually scared of sex before marriage. I thought it was going to be gross, painful, and only about him. I didn’t expect it to be any fun for me, ever. I had never really craved sex, so I didn’t see how I would ever really enjoy it. It took a little while, and a took a bit of work, but eventually I was surprised to find that it could be fun for me, too! What a surprise! I believe Lori when she says that statistically, married couples have better sex than singles. You can’t beat that level of intimacy and knowledge about one another that you have in marriage.

Well, if you feel like it, and if you haven’t yet, you can read my 5-part story about how my church community tried to educate me about sex and in the process scared the living bejebus out of me. It starts here: Sex Education Part 1: The Talk.

Well, whether you hate it or love it or feel completely indifferent about it, I wish you a happy Valentine’s Day. Thanks again for the interesting discussion!